6 - Community Land Titling in Bolivia

Summary

Bolivia inherited arrangements that dispossessed its indigenous peoples, and this system persisted through decades of military rule and discord until a civilian government sought decentralisation in the mid-1990s. This attracted Danish support through Danida and, as it involved indigenous peoples to whom restoration of land rights was of critical concern, Danish efforts to secure these rights became a key theme. This grew into a community land-titling process that matched the aims of a movement which swept indigenous leader Evo Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism to power in 2006. Denmark’s support for community land titling was a central priority of the new government, and the effect of its 1995–2010 programme was to transform the map of Bolivia in favour of Indigenous peoples. Their forest territories largely survived the later onslaught of plantation development, preventing the release of billions of tonnes of carbon while saving immeasurable biodiversity and ecological and cultural resources. Danida may not have fully appreciated its contribution and it left the community land sector prematurely, but Bolivia is now in a much stronger position than before to resist climate chaos, with a viable plurinational constitution and many relatively safe territorial forests and empowered Indigenous peoples.